October 3 2016

New training manual for care professionals teaches child rights approach

SOS Children's Villages and European partners release new training manual for alternative care professionals in child rights-based approach to work

With the release today of Realising Children’s Rights: A Training Manual for Care Professionals Working with Children in Alternative Care SOS Children's Villages and European partners are enabling more alternative care professionals to learn child rights-based approaches to their work with children.

Partners in the publication’s development include the European Commission's Fundamental Rights and Citizenship Programme, the Council of Europe, Eurochild and SOS Children’s Villages associations in Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia and Romania.


An effective child protection system can ensure that each and every child can realise their full potential.

But how effective any child protection system is depends on the ongoing development of its child care service workforce, including continuing investment in the care professionals responsible for protecting children and their rights.

Care professionals' awareness and ability to apply child rights-based approaches to their work are imperative to increasing the impact of quality care for children and young people.
 

Project to train care professionals

Training Professionals Working with Children in Care (2015-2016) is a project awarded to SOS Children’s Villages to build the capacity of alternative care professionals in child rights-based approaches, and to raise awareness at international and national levels about the need to train the child care workforce.

The new training manual came out of the project.

“Through our work with children at risk in more than one hundred countries, SOS Children’s Villages has seen that training is needed for care professionals in how to embed child rights into their daily work with children and young people in alternative care," said the project's manager, Florence Treyvaud-Nemtzov.

"Furthermore, we know that care professionals themselves want to learn more and improve the quality of their work with children and young people.”
 

Effective trainings

More than 840 care professionals have been trained so far through the project, also testing the training manual.

Pre- and post-training surveys showed clear improvements in participants’ perceived knowledge and positive attitudes about children’s rights in alternative care.

Participants indicated that their knowledge of child rights increased through the training, and that it was helpful for their daily practice with children in alternative care.

For more information about the project, please visit the project homepage.

 

Additional resources (PDFs)

Children and young people in care: Discover Your Rights, a booklet to help children and young people in care learn about their rights (2009)

Securing Children’s Rights: A Guide for Professionals Working in Alternative Care, helps care professionals understand and support children's rights (2013)

I’ve got rights! The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in Youth-Friendly Language, educational poster for people of all ages (2014)